The Fragments of Shattered Self Cut, Dulled, and Dissolved

Through this awakening process, It seems that the false self that was firmly believed to be “me” (by “me”) had shattered. Perhaps the fake me inside was never unified.

It’s been a process of these pieces dissolving after doing much internal damage. My dreams reflected this with many iterations of my “self” that I did not recognize at the time.

After reading some Carl Jung, I see that these were various identities of my psyche as well as collective archetypes presenting themselves, often in violent confrontations.

The broken edges sort of framed each different identity. They were incredibly sharp pieces and destructive at first. Much damage and torment arose out of the broken self pieces cutting their ways through the mind, through the false self.

This was a rough process of many years. I was always impatient through it, wishing it to be over NOW. This impatience was the source of suicidal thoughts as well. I was always too interested in the future to kill myself, though. Though, looking back, this awakening WAS a type of slow motion suicide. It was a killing of all the aspects of me that I was not.

It’s difficult to give a time frame since it was a process of looking at my thoughts and dreams mostly stemming from my Surgical Tech and Iraq war experiences. If I had to say, though it was from right after I got out of the military (2009) until recently feeling free (2017). It’s probably not a coincidence that I spent eight years in the Navy and eight years clearing out the experiences and waking up.

This newly shattered self became many sharp selves. Luckily they began grinding each other down as they all were false. The sharp edges were like broken pieces of glass being ground down and dissolving in the ocean.

Its edges met each other to share their depression, isolation, torturous nightmares, obsessed thoughts, confusion, hatred, and every other negativity which we apply to ourselves. These were fights the self pieces fought among themselves, it seemed. The marijuana helped. The alcohol certainly did not.

All of this unrealness was deep within my consciousness to be healed and released (which might be the same thing). I ask you to consider the harsh attitudes you have towards yourself and others.

These are your deepest opinions you have about the world and about yourself, buried deep. Don’t your opinions shift over time with new knowledge? Your inner realm reflects your outer realm, in my opinion.

I was incredibly hard on myself, always obsessing about “doing the right thing”. Yes, this served me well as I coldly assisted with surgeries, but at a great cost of a growing and increasingly buried shadow. Through my 20’s I did not even know this was a problem or even existed.

This deeply embedded shadow being only earned me intense private misery. I would drink my ass off to ignore this, but it only dug the trenches and caves deeper for more falseness of me to reside. Shadows love caves.

Since a small kid, I always worried about what people thought of me. Looking back now, I see the respect of others as completely worthless. It came with a nice (false me) reputation by those around me, but looking back, that wasn’t worth shit since it increased my own suffering and brought me to the brink of madness.

This shattering and rending process was what unveiled to me that I was obsessed with the thoughts of others around me. The absurdity of this obsession cannot be paralleled.

As I saw these sharp, false self pieces become dull and dissolve against each other, the idea of “me” with all of these self belief pieces was obviously entirely going away. If everything that I believed to be me was dissolving into pure awareness, then the entirety of “me” was too.

So what comes to replace the false self? What is left is a lightness, an openness, and easier creativity. It was a hellish process. I would have been totally lost and probably gone completely mad if I had not found the Taoist and Buddhist writings.

One of the quotes from these Eastern writings that stuck with me is a suggestion to “die before we die”. I offer this possibility to the false you that is suffering as well. On the other side of this is peace, a stilled mind, easiness throughout the day, calm action, and not giving a shit what others think!

I highly suggest the awakening process, in other words. You are never alone in it.